The growing ubiquity of open source software has been a big theme in the evolution of enterprise IT. But behind that facade of popularity lies another kind of truth: companies may be interested in using more open-source technology, but since there is a learning curve with taking on an source project, not all of them
Following Tier Mobility’s $60 million Series B late last year, the e-scooter rentals startup has been busy bolstering its C-suite. The Berlin-based company is announcing that Moritz Werner has joined as chief commercial officer (CCO), and Roger Hassan has joined as chief operational officer (CCO). Werner will be responsible for revenue related activities across all
Instamojo, a Bangalore-based startup that helps merchants and small businesses accept digital payments, establish presence and sell on the web, has acquired Times Internet-owned Gurgaon-based startup GetMeAShop. The deal is worth $5 million and includes Times Internet making an investment in Instamojo, Sampad Swain, co-founder and chief executive of the Bangalore-based startup, told TechCrunch in
Shareholders have repeatedly tried to oust Facebook’s chairman Mark Zuckerberg. The board has repeatedly rejected that demand. Outside investors are unlikely to get much help with that push from Facebook’s newest board member: Dropbox co-founder and CEO Drew Houston. The addition of Houston is the first since the departure of Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann from the
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Asana, a well-known workplace productivity company, announced yesterday it has filed privately to go public. The San Francisco-based company is well-funded, having raised more than $200 million; well-known, due in part to its tech-famous founding
Early stage European VC firm, Blossom Capital, is fresh from closing a $185M fund— a big jump up on its prior close. The firm makes just a handful of investments per year, mostly at the Series A stage, working very closely with founders in its portfolio — a strategy it refers to as “high conviction”
U.S. consumers aren’t adopting voice-based shopping as quickly as expected, according to a new report today from eMarketer. While consumers have been happy to bring smart speakers into their home, they continue to use them more often for simple commands — like playing music or getting information, for example — not for making purchases. However,
LG Electronics and ZTE said they have cancelled plans to participate in MWC later this month in Barcelona, Spain, because of coronavirus-related concerns. In a statement on its site, LG said it will skip MWC, the world’s largest mobile trade show, and launch this year’s releases at separate events “in the near future” instead. “With
Everyone wants to lend to small businesses, as the fintech boom continues to bring constituent players closer together in feature-terms. Thinking broadly, the rising focus on small-business lending amongst B2B fintech and finservices companies feels directionally similar to the rise of consumer-oriented fintech startups adding banking-like features last year. This week, several stories underscored the
Homie has made an impression among younger, first-time home buyers in the Utah and Arizona markets for cutting out the traditional closing costs, 6% real estate commissions and arduous paperwork associated with traditional home sales. It now plans to explore opening up in three new markets and will begin a Vegas launch in March with
Twitter today is announcing the official version of its “deepfake” and manipulated media policy, which largely involves labeling tweets and warning users of manipulated, deceptively altered or fabricated media — not, in most cases, removing them. Tweets containing manipulated or synthetic media will only be removed if they’re likely to cause harm, the company says.
Fearing weak fundraising options in the wake of the WeWork implosion, late stage startups are tightening their belts. The latest is another Softbank-funded company, joining Zume Pizza (80% of staff laid off), Wag (80%+), Fair (40%), Getaround (25%), Rappi (6%), and Oyo (5%) that have all cut staff to slow their burn rate and reduce
Dan Jones, the former General Partner at Global Founders Capital (the venture arm of Rocket Internet) and previously an investor with Fidelity, is thought to be nearing the first close of a new early-stage venture capital fund. Dubbed “Jigsaw,” the VC firm appears to be co-founded with Dan Smith, who previously ran Anthemis Exponential and
The cameras on our phones are getting good enough that it’s becoming hard to justify having a dedicated picture-taking device. Fujifilm’s X100 series has always made one of the strongest cases for it, however, and the latest iteration makes it more convincing than ever. I reviewed the original X100 back in 2011, and the series
Snapchat still isn’t profitable nearly two years after its IPO. In Q4 2019, Snap lost $241 million on 560.8 million in revenue that’s up 44% year-over-year and an EPS of $0.03. That comes from adding 8 million daily users to reach a total of 218, up 3.8% this quarter from 210 million and 17% year-over-year.
Couchbase, the popular NoSQL database, today announced the launch of Couchbase Cloud, a fully managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) offering for enterprises. Once the service is generally available later this summer, users will be able to spin it up on AWS and Microsoft Azure, with support for Google Cloud coming a bit later this year. This, the
Infor announced today that Koch Industries has bought the company in a deal sources peg at close to $13 billion. Infor, which makes large-scale cloud ERP software, has been around since 2002 and counts Koch as both a customer and an investor, so the deal makes sense on that level. Koch was lead investor last
A UK government advisory body on AI and data ethics has recommended tighter controls on how platform giants can use ad targeting and content personalization. Concerns about the largely unregulated eyeball-grabbing targeting tactics of online platforms — be it via serving ‘personalized content’ or ‘microtargeted ads’ to individuals or groups of users — include the
Extra Crunch is excited to announce a new community perk from automated subscription billing startup Chargebee. Starting today, annual and two-year members of Extra Crunch can receive free subscription invoicing until $100,000 in revenue is reached. You must be new to Chargebee to claim this offer. Chargebee helps you succeed with subscription billing. Chargebee replaces
Fintech startup N26 recently reached a new milestone as it now has five million customers. The company launched onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt five years ago. The premise was simple. A young startup wanted to build a bank that didn’t suck. Given the company’s impressive growth rate and its 4.8-star rating in the App Store, it’s
Facebook’s messaging app for families with children, Messenger Kids, is being updated today with new tools and features to give parents more oversight and control over their kids’ chats. Now, parents will be able to see who a child is chatting with and how often, view recent photos and videos sent through chat, access the
Small business lending is a huge market that has attracted massive attention from VC investors in recent years. Startups like Kabbage have raised more than a billion dollars in venture capital and debt to create lending platforms for businesses, and others in the space like Fundbox for lending and BlueVine for banking are trying to
Dixa, the customer engagement platform, has closed $36 million in Series B funding. Leading the round is Notion Capital, with participation from existing investors Project A Ventures and SEED Capital. The Copenhagen and now London-based startup says it will use the new capital to accelerate its product development. This will including innovating with regards to
Microsoft Teams, the collaboration platform that competes with Slack, has been down since about 8:30 am ET. Microsoft reports the outage was due to an expired certificate. Microsoft first posted that an outage was in progress on its Office 365 Status Twitter feed about 9:00 am ET, stating the company was looking into the problem.
Azimo, the money transfer service that is HQ’d in London but has the majority of its staff based in based in Poland, has secured €20 million in debt from the European Investment Bank (EIB), the lending arm of the European Union. The financing is supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the financial
As Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs cluster around the worldview that artificial intelligence is poised to change how we work, investors are deciding which use cases make the most sense to pump money into right now. One focus has been the relentless communication between companies and customer that takes place at call centers. Call center tech has spawned
Japan’s tourism industry is booming, but it faces a hotel room shortage, especially in Tokyo as it prepares for the Summer Olympics. H2O addresses the market opportunity with a platform that helps vacation rental owners manage their properties. The startup announced today it has raised $7 million in Series B funding from Samsung Ventures, Stonebridge
Twitter announced today that over the holidays it identified and shut down “a large network of fake accounts,” as well as many others “located in a wide range of countries,” collectively abusing a feature that let them match phone numbers to user accounts. TechCrunch previously reported this same issue on December 24, which is also
HPE announced today that it has acquired Scytale, a cloud native security startup that is built on the open-source Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone (SPIFFE) protocol. The companies did not share the acquisition price. Specifically, Scytale looks at application-to-application identity and access management, something that is increasingly important as more transactions take place between
Miles Kirby Contributor Miles is the managing director of AV8 Ventures and is based in London. He is focused on investments at Seed and Series A. It’s a somewhat crude yardstick by which to measure innovation in deep tech, and the result perhaps reflects historic bias as much as it does actual leadership in innovation